Learn Frontend Web Development

Become a frontend developer

“The curriculum was comprehensive, the community was super helpful and my mentor gave me all the guidance I needed to make my projects the best they could be. I loved the project-based curriculum because it gave me hands-on experience and practice implementing what I was learning, while helping me build portfolio pieces to apply for a job. Shortly after completing the course, I got my dream job as a Junior Developer at an awesome company, and I have since been promoted. I give Thinkful a lot of credit for giving me the guidance and self-confidence I needed.”

This course is the best way to create a real portfolio while getting started as an engineer. Working with a professional frontend developer you'll build interactive websites - including an online resume, a clone of a Karma landing page, and an interactive shopping list - using HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery. Don't know what those are? Don't worry, your mentor will teach you 1-on-1. You’ll graduate with a comprehensive portfolio and an active GitHub profile.

A clear path to success

Life as a Thinkful student

1-on-1 mentorship

Work with an experienced frontend developer to learn best practices, get feedback on your work, and fix difficult bugs.

Project-based curriculum

Learn by building websites that increase in interactivity and reflect real-world problems.

Group sessions

Join 40+ hours of Workshops and Q&A sessions every week. You'll have unlimited access as a Thinkful student.

Active community

Chat with other students, mentors, and alumni on Slack to get help instantly and learn best practices.

Your first day

Meet your mentor, access the curriculum, and join a community of 3000+ students and mentors on Slack. At Thinkful, the relationships you form with your mentor and peers help you learn faster.

During the course

Read less and build more. Each course is focused around projects to emulate real work and increase memory retention. And if you get stuck, ask your mentor or jump into daily Q&A Session.

Graduate on your schedule

Every Thinkful course is self-paced so there's no need to quit your job. Typically, students finish the Frontend course in 3 months with a personal portfolio. All graduates receive lifetime access to the course curriculum.

Andrew tried teaching himself HTML/CSS for the last year but wanted more structured learning. By time he had completed the course, Andrew was able to transition within Xerox from a role in IT to frontend development.

Thinkful has enabled JT to take his prototypes and actually build them out. Instead of passing off a design to the engineering team, JT is able get started on the frontend to validate the design and perform usability testing.

From Day 1, Varun was the most active student in the community - always helping out the newest students. This powerful learn by teaching helped him land his first software engineering job at MediaMath.

Frontend Web Development reviews

See what students are saying

I've taken a few free online courses to learn web development so paying for a curriculum was a bit of a leap for me. Having done so, I can appreciate the difference between a course that simply lists out HTML/CSS tutorials and a course that teaches industry standards and practices. It's clear that the staff at Thinkful put a lot of thought into the skills a developer needs to transition smoothly into a job. Teaching a man to phish...as it were.

Rather than spelling out the HTML/CSS code students of the course are required to do their own research to find solutions, just like they would on the job. Sections on Github, command line, codepen, and sublime text set you up to pass as an actual developer, not someone who googled a few tricks on CSS. Kudos to your curriculum designers and keep up the good work!

Thinkful has provided me with the opportunity to learn Front End Web Development at my own pace in a well-designed format. The curriculum is relevant and builds in a logical manner. Especially important to the coursework is the support. Having a mentor on my side to provide one-on-one support throughout the course has made the experience even more valuable.Thank you, Thinkful!

My experience with Thinkful has been a great one! I signed up to take the Front End Web Development course after trying several times to learn HTML, CSS, jQuery and Javascript both on my own and in other online courses, with all attempts ending unsuccessfully. Thinkful's curriculum and mentor program are the reason their course works so well. The material builds slowly upon itself, so it lays a solid foundation of understanding that then applies to later lessons, concepts, and languages learned. Having a mentor to talk directly to about any questions I had or concepts I found confusing made all the difference in the world. My mentor, Max, was awesome! He was always there to answer any questions and would often walk me through other exercises or examples that helped me see the problem I was stuck on in a different way, therefore unblocking me. I cannot speak highly enough of this program!

Thinkful Front-end Development course proved to me that I can actually code which seemed almost impossible before! Everything is explained pretty well and mentor helps a lot as well as Q&A sessions! I gained new skills and hope to continue learning how to code because it's so much fun! I like challenges and Thinkful is a perfect one to overcome!

The self driven online learning platform offered by Thinkful was perfect for me. It allowed me to move at my own pace and gave me the opportunity to spend as much time as necessary on any subject I felt I needed. The 1 on 1 mentor sessions gave me a platform to voice my questions and concerns, and helped me to focus on what was really important for my development. The Front-End Web Development course provided me with relevant information and educated me utilizing current and emerging industry practices.

With practically zero experience I entered the front end engineering course nervous to say the least. They're support systems and my mentor relationship subsided such nerves continuously throughout. I can't thank Thinkful and my mentor Max enough for setting me on my path to becoming a programer! Great course!

I believe Thinkful is one of the best courses that I've seen out there. I've tried a couple of courses from different companies, but I feel like the one that helped me the most was Thinkful. The way they provide the information is very useful. They will give you a task and a one hour time frame for you to complete as much as you can. Once you finish the one hour time frame, you can go to the next step which is a walkthrough of how to complete the previous task.

The 1on1 with the mentor is such a great way to answer all your questions. Nicolas was my mentor and I have to say that he was an awesome resource that helped me a lot. I would recommend Thinkful to anyone who wants to learn how to code.

I would highly recommend this course. I took it while working a typical 9-5 job and didn't feel completely overwhelmed. I didn't know what to expect considering my college major is in philosophy, but the video tutorials and the challenges they give you really help you understand the material without feeling like you were at a disadvantage from the start. I never really liked online classes but the way they organized the material made it much more enjoyable. I was a little worried with having it be self-paced but I actually preferred it that way in the end, and my mentor definitely helped out with that. I unfortunately had to put it on pause because I'm back in school finishing undergrad, but I will, without a doubt, finish the course later on.

I am currently in the Front End Web Development course and I am getting a lot out of it. The program layout is very helpful and the mentor they assigned to me is excellent. I would recommend this course to anyone who is looking to start from the beginning or who has been away from the subject and needs a good refresher course.

This course has provided me skills that have proven to put me ahead of my competition in the job hunt. The course is well designed and I really enjoyed the fact it makes you think about how to design the layout or solve a problem on your own after providing just enough background information. This was a great first step for me to take on my way towards becoming a full stack web developer and I would certainly recommend you enroll if this field interests you.

I've really had an amazing time with Thinkful, I've tried many other bootcamps or classes such as Hack Reactor prep but what they don't tell you on top of the entire bootcamp cost is that you have to give up your job as well as take out a loan to attend those bootcamps. Thinkful can be a part time course where you're allowed to make a living and have a much less aggressive career transition and they offer all the best stuff of bootcamps and job guarantees and for 1/2 the price!

I signed up for the Front End Web Development course through Thinkful when I thought I was signing up for the Bootcamp Prep course. When I found out a month later that I signed up for the wrong course, I immediately thought I made a mistake, but I actually felt like I made the right choice. I learned a lot more than I thought in a short amount of time, and felt that I could use that knowledge to get into the bootcamp of my choice. After a little bit of time, I was accepted into the bootcamp that I really wanted to join and could not be any happier. I accomplished what I wanted with the program and more. I would recommend this program to anyone wanting to start learning, because it gives you a great structure to learn, and doesn't hold your hand the entire way. Finding things out on your own, and through the slack community has made me learn things better than someone just telling me the answers. Thank you Thinkful for the direction you took me.

I studied Computer Science a few years ago and was introduced to css and html. From that point, I decided that I would definitely start a career in web development.

After my search for the best course of study, I found Thinkful and I am so greatful that I did. My mentor, James, is really cool, and explains the concepts very well. I love that the curriculum not only shows you how to do things, but offers many sites to read and expand on what you have already been taught. I also appreciate the flexibility of the course.

If you are interested in becoming a developer without any prior experience, Thinkful is perfect for you! I decided to take the Frontend developlemt course out of pure curioisity and also a desire to maybe someday be a software engineer. The course is part time and you can complete it as fast or as slow as you want. I now have a full portfolio of eight tangible projects that employers can look at. There is also an awesome full-time career path that I would reccomend if you are sure on a career change.

Tight on money??? No problem! I was able to complete the frontend course in a month and thus never had to make more than one payment. Now I still have full access to the course curriculum and slack chatroom to help continue my development(because the learning never stops)!

I had tried teaching myself Front-End Web Development for a long time and really struggled grasping JavaScript, which was stopping me from getting the job that I really wanted and also from building the projects I had been most interested in.

I tried Thinful because it was self paced and offered personalized mentorship, and that's where you really benfit. They host workships and live Q&A sessions all thoughout the day so you always have someone you can talk to when you get stuck. You can also just join these sessions and listen in on what other people are working on. This will save you so much time and headache when trying to figure things out.

After enrolling in this course, I was able to put together the pieces that I was missing and am more confident in building quality websites and web apps. I highly recommend Thinkful, they have a strong support community, high focus on job marketability, and are the best value for what you get.

I'm very happy with my experience at Thinkful this far. I'm 6 weeks into the FEWD program and am pretty positive i'm going to continue on with the career path.

Thinkful's curriculum gives you to the tools you need to learn indpenedently and then you're able to bounce your questions/ideas off your mentors and other students in the slack communtiy. The most convenient part of the program for me has been that i'm able to keep my full time job as it's not an option to put my life on hold for a certain amount of weeks to attend a bootcamp or other program. To start as an almost absolute beginner has been initmidating but you're supported along the way. My mentor, Tyler, has been such an incredible asset and is what really makes this course so beneficial.

You will 100% get out of the program as much as you put in. And if you're willing to work hard, there's no way that you will have a bad experience.

I can't speak to the job assistance because I don't believe the FEWD program has it, but i'm really looking forward to that aspect in the career path.

Great self-paced course. If you're willing to put in the time you can go from 0 to 60 in a very short amount of time. With Thinkful, I went from knowing almost nothing about web design to building sites for my company in under eight weeks. Andrea Bailey was my instructor she did a fantastic job of teaching, answering questions, and supporting me on whatever I was working on.

I have been enrolled in Thinkful for about 1 month now, so very new and very new to coding itself. I am a true beginner coder, changing careers. I was between Viking and Thinkful and did a lot of research to see what would be best for me. The cost, length of course, mentorship and career help was what led me to Thinkful ultimately. I knew that I would need help along the way with the intensity of the program and so mentorship was key for me. My mentor Marius is a superb mentor that has been doing web dev for a considerable amount of time, so I knew I was getting a professional.

I will say, the course is hard (is for me) but very much worth it. As much as I struggle is as much as I thrive and motivated to go the next challenge and see my coding create sites. You will struggle, you will doubt yourself and you will wonder if you will get better and YOU WILL if you stick with it and do the work involved.

I know I'm only a month in, but I have already learned so much! Only 5 months more to go!

Enrolled in order to solidify my knowledge that I currently had and to better myself as a developer. Left knowing more and enjoying the entire process. Would recommend for people wanting to learn or just starting out in industry.

Curated curriculum means most of the content is from FREE web resources. So I guess you're paying for the Mentor, except my mentor never answered any questions but rather threw me some web links and told me to go on Slack or Stackoverflow.

Yeah, I know I can find the answers online but I'm asking YOU right NOW for the answer. She also told me to go to Codeacademy - again another FREE resource.

I had high hopes for Mentor led learning but at Thinkful I got the impression that my Mentor was just trying to fulfill a quota of meetings and killing time just to reach the required 45 minute minimum.

I'll give Thinkful credit in that it got me to start using Github and Terminal but most of the technical learning I did on other resources like Codeacademy and even Lynda.com (my current employer has a company account).

I am currently taking the $300 a month Frontend Web Development course.

Pros: Quite a bit of course material, Course material can sometimes be in depth, Good mentorship, Breaks down learning into easy steps, Good amount of projects to work on.

Cons: Course material 95% of the time is extremely vague, No video's, For the most part you have to look other places to actually learn about what they cover, You get the feeling that a lot of the course work was just mashed together from other free websites out there, The price they charge for the course. Not worth $300. $100 a month or less seems a fair price

Overall I am very unimpressed with this course. The course material is altogether very vague. Going through it almost feels like you have to decipher everything line by line. I believe they do this so that it takes you longer to go through it so that they can charge you more.

If you are willing to drop money on an online course I would honestly look any where else but here. In all fairness I am going to complete the course and then look else where to continue my education. I would not recommend thinkful.com to anyone.

Just finished up Thinkful's FrontEnd Development Course with a dedicated mentor. In full disclosure, I conducted a significant amount of diligence into how best begin exploring a career in coding -- and after reading many reviews, making calls, talking with references, I decided to choose Thinkful. Importantly, my own personal experience over the past five months has been entirely consistent with the feedback I had received from a myriad of others before embarking on the course.

My experience with Thinkful: This was truly my first coding experience and while I was bit nervous, my assigned mentor literally assuaged each and every one of my concerns. IN so many ways, Thinkful bridges an important, critical gap between asynchronous, self-paced, online free learning and on the other end of the spectrum, jumping into a coding bootcamp, full-time (whether online or in residence.)

With Thinkful, I got access to:

(1) a very strong online curriculum that allowed me to work on my own pace

(2) a strong, active and supportive community of both instructors and fellow students with ample opportunities to participate in workshops (think extra, live classes)

(3) And most importantly, a dedicated "mentor" who was litearlly with me every step of the way.

I cannot emphasize enough how important this mentor-relationship is. While Thinkful calls its instructors mentors - I really thought of my mentor (TJ) as a super coach. He is a professional developer with a ton of experience -- experiences that he shared with me that went well above and beyond the actual curriculum itself. For example, there were multiple times in which TJ suggested fantastic additional, free learning resources that were outside the scope of the Thinkful online curriculum that I would likely not have found myself. There were instances were TJ told me that it would pay off in dividends to invest the extra time and effort to learn a ton of Git shortcuts. He was right.

Most of all, my Thinkful mentor served as an inspiring and encouraging coach. Not only were all of my 1-on-1 sessions with him instructive and incredibly helpful, but knowing that I had a meeting scheduled with TJ was super motivational to put the extra time in - even after a long & tiring day at school - so that I could be best prepared to a) try to impress him and b) make sure that I used the time most effectively to address questions or concepts that I had been struggling with on my own.

For my "capstone" project - TJ continued to be super encouraging and incredibly helpful. I wanted to go a little further for my FrontEnd project - so I literally developed and launched a commercial website that's now generating approximately $1K per month in revenue just a few weeks after launch. My Thinkful mentor was not only open to helping me with my project as part of our mentor sessions together, but was incredibly helpful in teaching me how to do things like STRIPE API integration, leveraging AWS et al. Again, I realize that these things may seem both obvious and simple -- but remember, prior to starting Thinkful, I had absolute zero experience.

To balance out this review, I really wish there were some things I could point to for areas of improvement in regards to the overall Thinkful experience. Fortunately (or unfortunately) there really aren't. Ultimately, the litmus test for me is will I be returning for the next course sequence at Thinkful? The answer is yes. I could not recommend Thinkful and it's mentor program more highly. Truly.

Mentor time: recurring time you get 1x weekly with the same mentor. They help steer your ship. My mentor is also responsive to email, which is great for getting hints on what to search for when I hit a snag.

Q&A time: random time slots with experienced developers. If you're stuck on something look for an open Q&A related to your subject, join the hangout, and start debugging.

Both are helpful and lower frustration while increasing learning. This is important when you are already working 50 hours a week.

Before I used to have trouble getting CSS. After practicing and working with my mentor, I feel confident that I can work with layouts now. Also, JavaScript doesn't seem so scary anymore. I really enjoyed working with my mentor on the course assignments each week. While I wasn't able to complete the course due to unexpected financial changes on my part, I plan on returning and completing the front-end web development course.

Thinkful has an option for those looking for part-time study. I decided to opt for this because I had some understanding of the subject. The price is $300 - $500 / month depending on the topic. I found the material to be very easy to understand. They nailed the core topics as well. The curriculum had interesting projects and challenges. However, I would have liked more examples and even more in-depth knowledge on how to tackle different challenges. You are assigned a mentor who meets with you once per week. Mine was alright. Moreover, the staff checks in with you a lot which is good.

I'm currently in the home stretch of the Front End Web Development course (FEWD) online at Thinkful. I have nothing but good things to say about my experience. The coursework is laid out in a clear, sensible way, starting with very basic HTML and CSS, then working through jQuery and from there into Javascript itself, from the basics into Object Orientated Programming. Finally, it works into AJAX and working with API's. Basically the course covers A LOT of what practical things you need to know to be a fully useful web developer tomorrow. Along the way you learn how to use Git and GitHub, which is required for virtually any gig in the web development world along with several other tools.

Thinkful really shines in a couple ways. First, the coursework is thorough, but it's not just reading examples and watching lectures. It's very much a project based experience, one that requires the student to learn how to use all the technologies and languages above, but also forces the student to keep learning on his own. They don't just teach syntax and technique, they also teach you how to learn. You're encouraged to explore the API's online, the specifications, the forums and resources like the MDN, Slack, StackOverflow etc. No developer every really stops learning, especially when it comes to speed of light technology like this, so learning how to learn is as important as knowing syntax and methodology.

All of the projects are useful as examples of your knowledge, and having them in your portfolio - which is a multi-stage project itself - are a great resource to have out there when it comes to impressing potential employers with your skills.

The other, and most important aspect of Thinkful is the 1 on 1 mentoring. My mentor Daniël is, to be frank, the man. He's an experienced programmer himself, and has a fantastic way of answering questions and teaching things during our weekly sessions. Most of the time my questions have to do with doing things the "right" way... i.e. what is the best practice or just the way that "real" programmers would accomplish something. Having access to a professional with a ton of experience is so key in this regard. Again, reading syntax is fine and all...but there are usually 90 ways to accomplish something. Your mentor helps you work through the various truly RIGHT ways to do things. You could never get that level of help reading a website or book, or watching a lecture.

All in all, I've had a great experience with Thinkful, especially with my mentor. My only complaint is not starting sooner. I plan on taking more courses at Thinkful - Angular, Node, Android, I'm looking at you.

I was trying to teach myself for 6 moths. I do not have a CS background, so it was difficult for me to even know where to start. I was looking for a free program, non of them really showed how to begin. I decided to go ahead and pay for a course and to have a mentor. Best decision I made. I learned so much more within 1 week rather than when I was trying to teach myself in those 6 months. The curriculum is great, just one thing.. As a teacher, Vocabulary is important. They should have vocabulary in bold and maybe like a glossary or a quiz at the end of lessons.

I was able to go at my own pace, which was sometimes 5 hours a week and other times 15 hours a week. My mentor kept me motivated and interested in the course material. If I ever needed help outside of my mentor sessions, I utilized the slack chat function to talk my issues out with other students. I felt I got what I paid for and more with all of the resources available to me through Thinkful.

I really enjoyed my time with Thinkful and my mentor Jacquie. It seemed like she was always there when I needed her to help me on my path of learning Frontend Web Development. Being in this program was a great boost in my confidence and knowledge and has helped to prepare me for my upcoming bootcamp. I definitely endorse this program, especially if you are just getting into coding and don't have anyone else to talk to about it. I, for example, came from a military and personal training background so close to no one to talk to or help me with code. Since Thinkful I have gotten two job offers and won two Hackathons within two months of finishing the program...

I'm a Mechanical Engineer with a Masters in Psychology who currently earns a living as a Project Controls Manger in Oil and Gas. Due to a volatile energy market, and an overwhelming desire to work remotely from anywhere in the world; I decided it was time to become a FULL-STACK WEB DEVELOPER.

I needed to find a school who would teach me what I needed to know in the shortest amount of time possible. So I did a Google search (I think my search terms were something like "Best Online Schools Full Stack Web Developer") and up came Thinkful. Their website suggested that they could teach you to be a Full-Stack developer in 4-6 months, so the timeframe was just right. And then, when I saw that Thinkful offered mentorship I 100% knew I'd be signing up. What better way to get through a program quickly than to have 3 one-hour mentorship sessions per week!

The curriculum at Thinkful is challenging, there is no doubt. The learning curve is steep! But they teach you everything you need to know, using the tools of the trade that you will be using when you get your first job, and the mentorship they provide ensures that you stick with it, even when the going gets tough.

Learning to code isn't easy. If it was, everyone would be doing it. I am grateful to have found Thinkful because if I was trying to learn to code on my own, I'm sure I would have quit more than a few times already!

My experience at Thinkful has too be honestly one of the best decision I have made for myself. So far i been enjoying the lessons. But the real reason I believe that makes Thinkful is their mentors, My mentor is willing to take the time to help me with any problems i might have and very encouraging

Thinkful has been one of the best decisions I made. I am actually enrolled into a software development bootcamp for April and I would have been very nervous and skeptical about it had it not been for Thinkful. After my 3-month course at Thinkful, I am confident I want to work in this field and am excited for the new challenges. The coursework has been very well written and the challenges are quite good. I would also like to make a special mention of my mentor Ms. Alissa Pierce. She has been the best mentor I could have asked for. She is always supportive and patient, answers all my stupid questions and has been incredibly easy to work with. She has helped me grow and trust my skills. I have learned so much from her these past 3 months and will always carry her suggestions and advises with me. Just a big thank you to Alissa for being as awesome as she is.

I am really happy with the course so far, I'm learning a lot and this is exactly what I was looking for. I have only one thing to share with you, Obviously it might be only me, but I found the jQuery section a bit confusing. I didn't know anything about jQuery and JavaScript and I think the lesson covers too many things at the same time instead of giving a step by step overview of what you can do with jQuery and how to write it.

So, before going properly through that section, I studied all the jQuery lessons that W3s school has to offer, I found them really helpful and easy to learn. After that, I came back to Thinkful and going through that section was way easier than before and I understood everything. Obviously I don't know about other students, so maybe it's just me, but I wanted to share this with you. Anyway as I already told you I really like the course so far.

Course work at Thinkful is very well thought out and the mentors are very helpful also. I love the course work and find reading material other then just a bunch of videos very easy to follow along with.

I had my doubts about a fully online course and my ability to succeed at it, but a few weeks in and I knew I had made the right choice. My mentor is amazing, the course work is fun and engaging, and the best part is I have found a balance of my day-to-day life and course work. Keep up the good work!

As a brand new student to programming, what I have enjoyed the most about Thinkful is the community. They offer plenty of tools to meet with new students and mentors whom are always flexible to share their knowledge and help you when you are stuck at some point in your course.

I believe motivation is a key component for all students and Thinkful targets this very well with fun projects yet challenging enough to create and strength solid skills in short time!

Another aspect I appreciate is their fast response with the support team and in general they are always looking to improve by actively listening to us: the community.

The course work is easy to follow and understand. The thing I like the most is having a mentor who is currently working in the industry. I can email him questions and he replies really quickly and also he explains the course material well during our sessions.

I have done the Frontend Web Developer course and now I am doing the Angular course. Thinkful has got everything just right:

- one on one mentor
- course material that challenges you but you have assistance if you get stuck
- show you how to use real industry tools like sublime text and GitHub
- career advice
- price: great value for money

At the end of four months I feel confident in being able to change career path, what more can I say!

As a new web developer I found the course challenging but not overwhelming. The main reason that I selected Thinkful was because of the mentorship program, which was excellent. I enjoyed having the access to someone who had experience in what I was studying and be available to breakdown problems and provide guidance to find solutions.

Studying at Thinkful was an invaluable experience. I am really happy because I have acquired much of new knowledge and I managed to create a small portfolio, demonstrating my new skills. The curriculum is written in a very clean and simple way and you have full guidance on your projects. Of course as the lessons go by you get to work more independently but there is always enough information and online help to walk through the challenge set. People at Thinkful were really helpful and caring, from my mentor to the Slack community! I hope I will come back to a new course soon!

This was a great course for me. I learned a ton and acquired a lot of best practices...plus got a few projects for my portfolio. Nicolas has been a great resource. He gave me a lot of advice and I have a lot of new ideas for my next steps based on our conversations.

I did the Front End Web Development course and it was awesome. Having a one on one mentor means that when you get stuck on something, they help you get unstuck. I am much more confident than I was at the start of the course.

It is 2016, I just spent a month stepping thru the Thinkful Front-End Development course. While my mentor was helpful and talented, the course-work was disappointing. "Think of reading a book with many pages missing from the story". You are left with a feeling of confusion as too much essential subject matter is not provided by Thinkful coursework regarding HTML and CSS. While the mentor can fill-in some gaps, you must go to other websites to complete your answers to your many questions. For a price of $300 to $1500 per month, the student deserves more robust course materials to properly leverage their time spent with their mentor. Unfortunately skilled mentors will not makeup for the flawed course materials.

It is 2016, I just spent a month stepping thru the Thinkful Front-End Development course. While my mentor was helpful and talented, the course-work was disappointing. "Think of reading a book with many pages missing from the story". You are left with a feeling of confusion as too much essential subject matter is not provided by Thinkful coursework regarding HTML and CSS. While the mentor can fill-in some gaps, you must go to other websites to complete your answers to your many questions. For a price of $300 to $1500 per month, the student deserves more robust course materials to properly leverage their time spent with their mentor. Unfortunately skilled mentors will not makeup for the flawed course materials.

I took the thinkful frontend developer course part-time to bone up my work skills. While I walked away with some knowledge, I ended up abandoning the course about halfway through. My instructor was kind but didn't seem very worldly and would often take our calls from in bed (!) which was both unprofessional and awkward. The material was often out of date from the current version of Chrome. I ended up using other resources through Udemy that were a fraction of the cost of thinkful and got more value. Not recommended.

I'm about to wrap up my time with the Thinkful Front-End Web Development course. I've thoroughly enjoyed my time with the guys and gals at Thinkful and have definitely made some big jumps in a few different areas of web development. Without using too many platitudes, you'll basically get out what YOU put into the course. If you really push yourself and build things from the ground up, you'll come out on the other side with a significantly improved skill set.

Another great thing about Thinkful is that they are always looking to improve and provide more value to their students. I believe they are currently on v4.0 for the front-end course. The mentors are awesome, the projects lead you down a path that doesn't dead-end, and you community is even better. We probably couldn't be friends if you didn't enjoy your time with the Thinkful team.

PS: Thinkful has also introduced "workshops" recently into their office hours, meaning that there are several different subject areas introduced each week in a one hour live workshop. Topics lately have included React, Node, organizing code, error handling, gulp, and a few others.

I didn't make it far in the course, but when I did make an honest effort to do what they wanted, I found the way they formatted the curriculum to be overly complicated. I am very new to HTML and CSS and didn't understand when they would say to do something because it was poorly formatted. Perhaps the expectation was for people to know more before taking the course but they said it was for beginners, and I didn't find that to be the case. They even had examples of what the code should look like but when I was showing it to my instructor, we realized the code they used was causing problems for my page, which lead to me getting frustrated. I really didn't have time to waste but waste it I did.

I just graduated from Thinkful's main FEWD (Front End Web Design) course. I have not yet tried to find a job as this process is a career change for me and I am still financially hooked to my prior job for a few more months. I cannot therefore speak to Thinkful's job assistance, but they have offered to help even though it was not covered in my original package.

I have to start off by saying how hard to back office staff works to hear from their students and learn from what they like and dislike about their program. They seemed super attentive to anything you had to say, whether that’s for me, their business, or both, I just can't say, but it did feel as though it was for me.

I did have a small amount of coding background coming into the course. A long length of time trying to teach myself, but not a huge amount of actual time was spent given that I work a 55+ hour a week job with lots of travel. That is the main reason I choose Thinkful and I think overall that was a smart move. Thinkful's biggest competitor is Bloc. Thinkful is a bit newer and rapidly growing everyday thus it is hard to make a full comparison, however, because I spent the money, I think I shall.

Thinkful is cheaper but you do receive what you pay for in this area. The curriculum had a huge number of errors, mainly typographical, however, they started to wear on the student as you go through the material. Given that Thinkful is so young, it is understandable, but nonetheless, quite irritating. Also on the curriculum, there was a great deal of "go to this other website and read their lessons and then come back here for your project". They are updating it as we speak, all the time, and have multiple version going at the same time depending on when you start. This was one of my two biggest pet peeves with Thinkful. Their curriculum is just not uniquely theirs while Bloc's does have a home written curriculum. My other pet peeve was that I was unable to choose my mentor specifically. While they were quite knowledgeable, they did not fit me personally and had some other shortcomings that I would have at least been able to attempt to rectify by choosing one that aligned with my goals. I am confident, that had I complained to Thinkful, they would have changed me out, however, like I said, I would then just be paired with another mentor at random, without really fixing the problem of alignment.

Thinkful's projects are great, though a bit on the lighter side. It is only 3 months of about 10 hours a week but still I felt that doing just the projects at face value would not lead to much help. I took my own initiative as much as I could to do extra for each project, just for the practice. I know Bloc's projects are much more in depth and of larger number. I would have liked that.

My overall conclusion is therefore, that for the money, this is a great program. If you want to go their online only, Bloc is quite expensive but offers more, and Thinkful is cheaper but offers less. This Thinkful program was still great and I would recommend to anyone that cannot afford the Bloc courses or does not need the intensity of that program.

When I found Thinkful I was looking for a way to reclaim my life and my time. I wanted to be able to work from home and focus on my family. After all, I didn't get married and have three wonderful kids just to spend the majority of my waking time at work. I wanted to be there, to watch them grow up. I realized that the only currency of worth in our lives is time. You can't get time back and you can't stop spending it. The thought of missing years of my kids lives because I worked a "traditional" job weighed heavy on my heart. It was a driving force pushing me to make radical change.

College was just to expensive and time consuming. I didn't want a well rounded education I wanted a specialized one. I wanted to hone my skills towards a specific goal and while college degrees are cool and all it just wasn't going to work for me.

When I discovered Thinkful the first thing I noticed was that they were really friendly. In fact I was able to get on the phone and talk to them right away. They were quick to go over the pros and cons of online learning. They let me know that it was on my own time frame and that I could go as fast or as slow as I wanted. They told me about how the mentorship program works and what I could expect. I was the most excited about the prospect of a mentor. After attempting to self teach my self front-end dev and hitting wall after wall with no one to ask for help I was ready for a mentor.

After speaking with Thinkful I continued to research my options. I reached out to several other prominent online bootcamps and after weighing all of the pros and cons of each I decided to choose Thinkful.

The price was right and the people seemed exceptionally warm and sincere. I took a leap and enrolled and it changed my life!

My mentor was/is amazing. He is the reason I was able to succeed through the whole process. He not only provided support and accountability but true friendship. I always looked forward to our weekly hangout and a chance to ask questions and show off my work. He was always patient and took the time to make sure I really understood the curriculum. There were times when I just didn't get things. In fact several times we focused on the same weeks problem for several weeks. He made 100% sure I got it and I was ready to move forward. He wasn't trying to push me through, he was teaching me. And I actually...gasp LEARNED the content!

I found the curriculum well done. It continued at a good pace. I felt like each new concept was introduced at the right time and it was challenging but not overwhelming. Thinkful suggests that the Front-end dev course should take about three months. I took four months and that felt just right. I was able to spend time with my family and still have time to continue to learn.

Midway through my course I decided to make the jump into freelancing. I had reduced my hours to part time at my job but that wasn't enough. I needed a change! So I quit and went 100% into freelancing. It was scary as hell but I had made up my mind. I knew my skill set was strong enough to start charging. I also felt confident in my ability to learn and master my trade.

I am now in the second year of my business. It hasn't been easy and I know there are still many challenges ahead of me but its been the best years of my life. I work from home and get to enjoy my beautiful wife and children every day. I am watching them grow up and giving them my time instead of a job I didn't like. I just bought a house and I am getting the privilege to partner with exceptional clients.

I went on to take the awesome Angular.JS course with Thinkful. I was even given the honor to help write some of the content for Thinkful's freelancing course. Things have gone full circle and I honestly couldn't have done it on my own. Thinkful was the foundation I needed to get going and help me live my dream. I am so thankful for Thinkful!

I just graduated from Thinkful's main FEWD (Front End Web Design) course. I have not yet tried to find a job as this process is a career change for me and I am still financially hooked to my prior job for a few more months. I cannot therefore speak to Thinkful's job assistance, but they have offered to help even though it was not covered in my original package.

I have to start off by saying how hard to back office staff works to hear from their students and learn from what they like and dislike about their program. They seemed super attentive to anything you had to say, whether that’s for me, their business, or both, I just can't say, but it did feel as though it was for me.

I did have a small amount of coding background coming into the course. A long length of time trying to teach myself, but not a huge amount of actual time was spent given that I work a 55+ hour a week job with lots of travel. That is the main reason I choose Thinkful and I think overall that was a smart move. Thinkful's biggest competitor is Bloc. Thinkful is a bit newer and rapidly growing everyday thus it is hard to make a full comparison, however, because I spent the money, I think I shall.

Thinkful is cheaper but you do receive what you pay for in this area. The curriculum had a huge number of errors, mainly typographical, however, they started to wear on the student as you go through the material. Given that Thinkful is so young, it is understandable, but nonetheless, quite irritating. Also on the curriculum, there was a great deal of "go to this other website and read their lessons and then come back here for your project". They are updating it as we speak, all the time, and have multiple version going at the same time depending on when you start. This was one of my two biggest pet peeves with Thinkful. Their curriculum is just not uniquely theirs while Bloc's does have a home written curriculum. My other pet peeve was that I was unable to choose my mentor specifically. While they were quite knowledgeable, they did not fit me personally and had some other shortcomings that I would have at least been able to attempt to rectify by choosing one that aligned with my goals. I am confident, that had I complained to Thinkful, they would have changed me out, however, like I said, I would then just be paired with another mentor at random, without really fixing the problem of alignment.

Thinkful's projects are great, though a bit on the lighter side. It is only 3 months of about 10 hours a week but still I felt that doing just the projects at face value would not lead to much help. I took my own initiative as much as I could to do extra for each project, just for the practice. I know Bloc's projects are much more in depth and of larger number. I would have liked that.

My overall conclusion is therefore, that for the money, this is a great program. If you want to go their online only, Bloc is quite expensive but offers more, and Thinkful is cheaper but offers less. This Thinkful program was still great and I would recommend to anyone that cannot afford the Bloc courses or does not need the intensity of that program.

My experience with Thinkful was extremely positive from the beginning. Before enrolling, I wanted to make sure that I would be able to get a mentor that really worked with me. They asked me for guidelines in choosing a mentor for me, and assured me that I could request a change if we didn't "click." Luckily, we did.

The material is very well-presented in an order that makes sense. You dive in actually writing code right away, and work on projects throughout. These projects provide not only hands-on learning, but finished pieces you can show to prospective employers. Many are still in my portfolio today.

The weekly sessions with your mentor are what what really set this program apart from others, IMO. My mentor was great. She helped me when I needed it without just fixing things for me, which helped me understand things. She was available by email outside our scheduled sessions. She was AWESOME.

In addition to mentors, there is a student community where you can post your projects for help or feedback, both from other students and other TAs and mentors. This is frequently the fastest way to get help. There are also office hours daily (or close to daily) via google hangout with different mentors. Anyone can go into the office hours hangout and get help or ask questions. Sometimes the mentor will talk about aspects of the industry if there's not people that need help with specific questions. This was SO valuable!

I also found the support staff to be friendly and quick to respond to technical issues or feedback.

When I finished my course at Thinkful I felt confident as a junior front end developer. I would highly recommend this program to anyone, especially those looking for something in between completely self-directed study like Treehouse and a full bootcamp.

I believe that since I finished, they have expanded the course to include job search assistance, which would make it even more valuable.

During the summer of 2014 I attended the online Thinkful FrontEnd Web Development (FEWD) course. I use to be a web developer, but had since fallen out of the game, not knowing what was relevant vs. irrelevant.

In a very short period of time, the FEWD course got my interest back in the field, and also got me up to speed on pertinent things to focus on while trying to get back into the field. This course come down to how immersed you allow yourself to become in the overall course. By overall course I mean, using the community chat, joining the office hour hangout meetings, as well as completing your assignments, etc...

Weekly hour long, and they typically went over, sessions with the same mentor throughout the course was more than beneficial. My mentor would give amazing real world examples of scenarios that I might find myself in somewhere along the line, and I could ask him or her questions about certain WebDev ideas that I may have and they would dive right in, helping me every step of the way.

In summary:

Great course
Worth the money spent
You get out what you put in
Great people!

If you are autodidactic but need a little bit of guidance, Thinkful is amazing. I had a little experience building static websites with HTML and CSS, but really wanted to get more programming experience with Javascript. I had clear objectives and knew what I wanted to learn. This is important because I hit a wall with my first mentor, but Thinkful was accommodating and found me someone who could take me the rest of the way through the course with my particular learning goals in mind.

The Front-end course at Thinkful was one of the best experiences that I've had during my journey to become a developer. They have a easy to read and understand, yet thorough material set. I started with no knowledge of programming or writing markup, and afterwards was able to build sites from the ground up. One of the reasons that I feel I got so much out of the program is that I was able to have one on one time with a mentor. I could talk through the problem that I was stuck on and they would help me figure it out. The keyword being help, you don't learn anything from someone spoon feeding you the answers. Learning to solve problems is such an important skill.

The other reason that I enjoyed the program is that I never once felt like I was competing against my peers. I was able to work at my own pace and not burn myself out. I did move from Thinkful to an on location bootcamp and I feel I can say that people are able to learn without coding 16+ hours a day.

I want to explain the 1 star for Job Assistance. During my enrollment at Thinkful they didn't really have any career help after the program. They have since started a career assistance section. I haven't taken it so I can't give an honest opinion of it.

I finished Thinkful in January. All the content used in the Front-end development course can be found on online for free. In, fact I completed a lot of the resources they used before I started Thinkful. You do get a mentor. My mentor didn't show up for scheduled meetings. You are better off using codementor.io to find your own mentor (that meets your requirements) at a reasonable price. It's cheaper than paying $500 a month for free content and mediocre mentors. You will have a portfolio when you finish, but it's not worth paying $1500 for three months.

I'm writing this here to help anyone that might be on the fence about thinkful...
1) They don't teach, sure you can ask your mentor stuff, but the actual lesson plans, the ones your supposed to spend all day doing... I kid you not they tell you to go to Google, or stack overflow to find the answers.

2) they raised the price to $500 a class, because they offer "career services". I'm not sure what this means because they don't offer you a job or help you find one.

3) at the end of it all your spending $1500 to Google html, CSS, and javascript. You'll find your self using free resources on the web, thinking to your self. " why the hell am i spending $1500?". ohhhhhhhh cool I made a portfolio....

I had a background in sales, with little coding experience, but was eager to make a career shift to software development. I decided on Thinkful over a bootcamp because of the flexibility and cost.

The course provided the fundamentals and best-practices I needed to start with next to no experience. I found that the mentor sessions and office hours alone were worth the investment - having access to expert programmers for several hours a week is totally invaluable. Think about this, a comparable "mentor session" from a service like airpair can cost over $200/hour. To me, this is what made it a no brainer.

Beyond the obvious benefit of having a mentor to help you work through problems, I found that having a mentor session or office hours to attend kept me motivated - I never wanted to show up to a session without progress or questions. After finishing the front-end course, I completed the ruby/rails course, and less than two months after, received three offers (rails dev, front-end dev, angularjs dev). I'm now working as an angularjs developer and loving it.

I took the FEWD course in the Fall of 2013 and I'm so glad I did! The curriculum was comprehensive, the community was super helpful and my mentor gave me all the guidance I needed to complete the curriculum and make my projects the best they could be.

I loved the project-based curriculum because it gave me hands-on experience and practice implementing what I was learning, while helping me build portfolio pieces to apply for a job.

Shortly after completing the course, I got my dream job as a Jr Dev at an awesome company, and I have since been promoted. I give Thinkful a lot of credit for giving me the guidance and self-confidence I needed.

When I first began reviewing software dev training options I found two distinct groups: free online resources, and $10k intensive bootcamps. Thinkful was the only option I found that lands in the middle of these options. I decided on Thinkful over simply using free resources because of two critical factors that are difficult to put a price on: motivation and mentorship. I decided on it over a bootcamp because of it’s flexibility, price, and the thought that I could always enroll in a bootcamp if I got through Thinkful but couldn’t land a job (spoiler: I landed a job almost immediately after finishing Thinkful).

I started with the Front-End course, which provided the fundamentals and best-practices I needed to start with next to no coding experience. I found that the mentor sessions and office hours alone were worth the investment - having access to expert programmers for several hours a week is totally invaluable. Think about this, a comparable "mentor session" from a service like airpair can cost over $200/hour. To me, this is what made it a no brainer - far faster and more effective than posting to SO or IRC.

Beyond the obvious benefit of having a mentor to help you work through problems, I found that having a mentor session or office hours to attend kept me motivated - I never wanted to show up to a session without progress or questions. After finishing the front-end course, I completed the ruby/rails course, and less than two months after, received three offers (rails dev, front-end dev, angularjs dev). I'm now working as an angularjs developer and loving it.

I took the FEWD course in the Fall of 2013 and I'm so glad I did! The curriculum was comprehensive, the community was super helpful and my mentor gave me all the guidance I needed to complete the curriculum and make my projects the best they could be.

I loved the project-based curriculum because it gave me hands-on experience and practice implementing what I was learning, while helping me build portfolio pieces to apply for a job.

Shortly after completing the course, I got my dream job as a Jr Dev at an awesome company, and I have since been promoted. I give Thinkful a lot of credit for giving me the guidance and self-confidence I needed.

Someone described Thinkful as being “in the middle” between free online resources and $10k+ programming bootcamps, and I think that’s an apt description. I decided on Thinkful over simply using free resources because of two critical factors: motivation and mentorship. I decided on it over a bootcamp because of it’s flexibility, price, and the thought that I could always enroll in a bootcamp if I got through Thinkful but couldn’t land a job (spoiler: I landed a job almost immediately after finishing Thinkful).

I started with the Front-End course, which provided the fundamentals and best-practices I needed to start with next to no coding experience. I found that the mentor sessions and office hours alone were worth the investment - having access to expert programmers for several hours a week is totally invaluable. Think about this, a comparable "mentor session" from a service like airpair can cost over $200/hour. To me, this is what made it a no brainer.
Beyond the obvious benefit of having a mentor to help you work through problems, I found that having a mentor session or office hours to attend kept me motivated - I never wanted to show up to a session without progress or questions. After finishing the front-end course, I completed the ruby/rails course, and less than two months after, received three offers (rails dev, front-end dev, angularjs dev). I'm now working as an angularjs developer and loving it.

This week I’ve completed the FEWD (Front End Web Development) course at Thinkful. It’s been three months of hard work in which I think I’ve made good progress in sharpening my web development skills. In this post, I’m sharing my impressions for those who want to have the opinion of a former student about the course before making the decision to take it.

This is a course that can be taken by absolute beginners to learn html, css and javascript from the ground up, but it’s also useful to people who already have some experience, but want to improve in any of the technologies involved.

After three months of work, I’ve learned quite a few interesting things and I’ve got a portolio that I can improve in the future. I believe this is a quite good outcome for the time spent.

What makes the course shine, in my opinion, is that it includes weekly meetings with a mentor and access to a community of students that are going through the same problems as you are. This is really powerful to create accountability and get rid of procrastination to make progress in short time.

In case you’re wondering, I feel that I could have learned the same stuff on my own, but I don’t how long would that have taken me. If you’re really good in setting your own goals and keeping the motivation to accomplish them and you’ve got plenty of time to look for good learning resources, then you might not need the course, but I’d still encourage you to think about taking it.

After three months of work, I’ve learned quite a few interesting things and I’ve got a portfolio that I can improve in the future. I believe this is a quite good outcome for the time spent.

What makes the course shine, in my opinion, is that it includes weekly meetings with a mentor and access to a community of students that are going through the same problems as you are. This is really powerful to create accountability and get rid of procrastination to make progress in short time.

In case you’re wondering, I feel that I could have learned the same stuff on my own, but I don’t how long would that have taken me. If you’re really good in setting your own goals and keeping the motivation to accomplish them and you’ve got plenty of time to look for good learning resources, then you might not need the course, but I’d still encourage you to think about taking it.